Every now and then, you come across things that make the internet worthwhile. So yeah, there's this whole genitalia length comparing competition going on between Adobe and Apple, where both companies are actually arguing, with straight faces, which of the two is more open (which to me comes across as Mario and Zelda arguing over who's less of a sell-out). Luckily, though, there's the internet to make us laugh.

Oh, you mean it ran better because of lack of any memory protection (which was optional... go figure)

Windows 3.11 had no memory protection, not even optional one and neither did Windows 95/98/98SE/ME.
Any slightly above beginner level programmer knew that through pain, blood and tears.
Get an Windows 98, Visual Studio 6 and go see for yourself the horrible pile of crap Windows was pre NT5.

or because applications need to specifically designed to use preemptive multitasking and, if not designed that way, MacOS was using a cooperative multitasking with all apps sharing a single process?

What we see here are the instance handles required for Windows cooperative multitasking. Granted, the mechanism was changed in Win32 (you still need to drag that baggage along) but it was still a single threaded cooperative multitasking system.

;-) So when your calculator app banged, ALL processes needed to be closed...

Which was the same for Windows 3.11/95/98/98SE/ME most of the time.

I switched a bit more than three years ago from XP + Linux + Solaris to OS X + Linux + Solaris and i can't imagine possibly to go back to Windows. I have to occasionally use Windows XP/Vista/7 at work, helping out numb nuts with their little IT problems or writing in house tools and i suffer when i have to use it. I can't believe how Windows managed to make no progress at all since Windows 2000. All they seem to do are new Themes, which is especially sad, since they only seem to come in butt ugly.

What i find especially hideous is the software culture that developed around that disgusting mess. Hello Windows developers: don't you think it is time to embrace Unicode? Okay it is only out there for twenty years and we all know how incredibly slow the world of computing evolves, but do you really think it is adequate that your software can't open files if they are named in a language that isn't covered by ASCII code?

Seriously, whenever I forget at work that I'm sitting at a Windows machine (because i got used to my eyes hurting) and try to Unzip a file that one of our Japanese partners sent us and I see WinZIP crash because it just can't handle Unicode strings, i wonder how anyone could possible put up with something like that and even *pay* to get tortured this way.

Windows 3.11 had no memory protection, not even optional one and neither did Windows 95/98/98SE/ME.

Uncorrect. Windows9x had memory protection even if it was not perfect since it was not protecting first megabyte of userland memory. Even if not perfect, it was there and was able to protect your processes. You could easily spot which programs were going to make system crash after a few time you were using them.

Get an Windows 98, Visual Studio 6 and go see for yourself the horrible pile of crap Windows was pre NT5.

Uh oh I used Visual Basic since v1.0 so you're not talking to someone not knowing what he's talking about, friend ;-) And you were inaccurate again: NT4 is/was considered one of the best systems around. Of course, things went 1000% better when Windows9x/ME line was merged into NT one. But that's another story.

May i point out the definition of a WinMain() for you? int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, Instance HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) What we see here are the instance handles required for Windows cooperative multitasking.

As you noticed, that was for Win16 apps only. 16bit apps were still cooperately multitasking but that was expected since you needed to support your old Windows3.x and MS-DOS applications.

Again, it was enough to ensure that applications you were running were all 32 to get memory protection and preemptive multitasking. It happend in a few months, given the pace of millions of developers releasing lots of apps everyday at that time.

Which was the same for Windows 3.11/95/98/98SE/ME most of the time.

I don't agree, talking about W95+.

I have to occasionally use Windows XP/Vista/7 at work, helping out numb nuts with their little IT problems or writing in house tools and i suffer when i have to use it.[...] What i find especially hideous is the software culture that developed around that disgusting mess. Hello Windows developers: don't you think it is time to embrace Unicode? Okay it is only out there for twenty years and we all know how incredibly slow the world of computing evolves, but do you really think it is adequate that your software can't open files if they are named in a language that isn't covered by ASCII code?

I don't know what you're talking about. Are you sure you've been in to Windows developing in the last ... hmm... say, 7 years? Not supporting Unicode? What? Just out of curiosity, what technologies are you using when developing for Windows ? I don't think you're using latest tools and technologies...

and try to Unzip a file that one of our Japanese partners sent us and I see WinZIP crash because it just can't handle Unicode strings, i wonder how anyone could possible put up with something like that and even *pay* to get tortured this way.

Uh? What does that have anything to do with Windows? ;-) You seems to ignore that, given backward compatibility of Windows, there are many apps written for Win32 which haven't been updated. I know you're not used to that, considering that MacOS and other OSes needs apps to be rewritten on each system new version, but that's a VALUE for developers.

Of course, if WinZIP guys have been lazy to update their code to keep up with improvements and new versions, they're fully to blame. And today a Windows system won't crash for a poorly written app, never. I'm just happy that a few months ago I had to run an old MS-DOS application to get a code a customer needed and it worked like a charm. Maybe you're happy when you need to recompile your applications only to find that they won't work anyway. I'm not. ;-)

To summarize, I wasn't stating that Windows95/98 were perfect or most advanced systems you could run. We all know that desktop stability and reliability for Windows system started with Windows 2000 Workstation, first edition to sport WindowsNT line into a desktop product.

However, you can't really say two things:

* that MacOS was then more advanced than Windows. That was simply wrong. And I just mentioned two reasons but if we dig, I could mention tens of them. For example, Apple was unable to provide system-wide advanced subsystems until CoreData, CoreAudio and CoreVideo in MacOS X when Windows developers had that since Windows95... just to mention a few more items.

* that Microsoft could not make reliable systems at that time: WindowsNT is there to prove it.

That was actually what i was getting at with the hideous software culture evolving around it. I tried every archiving app on Windows. Not one of them supports Unicode. I tried every image viewer I could find. Not one of them supports Unicode.

It is simply impossible to find Apps that support Unicode on Windows, not even all Microsoft apps support Unicode. The only way to get Apps that don't crash on you if you want/need unicode support are Java apps, but then why use Windows anyway if you don't have to.

I can still run most OS X 10.1 software, so i don't quite get what you are getting at. I also can run most XP software on Vista, but I more often run into XP software that doesn't run on Vista then i run into OS X 10.1 software which doesn't run on 10.6.

Okay, so i don't get to run Software from the late nineties, but what do i care? Windows software mostly buys backwards compatibility to Windows 95 by sucking generally (the Unicode issue being one such thing - most projects ignore it to ensure Windows 9x/ME compatibility).

How many Windows 95 boxes do you estimate still being in use?

I'm aware of the fact that Windows theoretically supports Unicode. What do I care when virtually no Windows software does?

I don't have problems like that on Linux, OS X or Solaris. I don't have stupid activation issues. And I don't have software that comes with anti piracy measurements that f*ck up an OS installation.

Windows is a Nightmare and I do not expect that to change. I only wish it would go away, but I'm afraid I'm stuck suffering it, at least at work hours.